Bleak House
trees gloom together in the woods, and as the Ghost’s Walk, touched
at the western corner by a pile of fire in the sky, resigns itself to
coming night, they drive into the park. The rooks, swinging in their
lofty houses in the elm-tree avenue, seem to discuss the question of
the occupancy of the carriage as it passes underneath, some agreeing
that Sir Leicester and my Lady are come down, some arguing with
malcontents who won’t admit it, now all consenting to consider the
question disposed of, now all breaking out again in violent debate,
incited by one obstinate and drowsy bird who will persist in putting
in a last contradictory croak. Leaving them to swing and caw, the
travelling chariot rolls on to the house, where fires gleam warmly
through some of the windows, though not through so many as to give an
inhabited expression to the darkening mass of front. But the
brilliant and distinguished circle will soon do that.
Mrs. Rouncewell is in attendance and receives Sir Leicester’s
customary shake of the hand with a profound curtsy.
“How do you do, Mrs. Rouncewell? I am glad to see you.”
“I hope I have the honour of welcoming you in good health, Sir
Leicester?”
“In excellent health, Mrs. Rouncewell.”
“My Lady is looking charmingly well,” says Mrs. Rouncewell with
another curtsy.
My Lady signifies, without profuse expenditure of words, that she is
as wearily well as she can hope to be.
But Rosa is in the distance, behind the housekeeper; and my Lady, who
has not subdued the quickness of her observation, whatever else she
may have conquered, asks, “Who is that girl?”
“A young scholar of mine, my Lady. Rosa.”
“Come here, Rosa!” Lady Dedlock beckons her, with even an appearance
of interest. “Why, do you know how pretty you are, child?” she says,
touching her shoulder with her two forefingers.
Rosa, very much abashed, says, “No, if you please, my Lady!” and
glances up, and glances down, and don’t know where to look, but looks
all the prettier.
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen, my Lady.”
“Nineteen,” repeats my Lady thoughtfully. “Take care they don’t spoil
you by flattery.”
“Yes, my Lady.”
My Lady taps her dimpled cheek with the same delicate gloved fingers
and goes on to the foot of the oak staircase, where Sir Leicester
pauses for her as her knightly escort. A staring old Dedlock in a
panel, as large as life and as dull, looks as if he didn’t know what
to make of it, which was probably his general state of mind in the
days of Queen Elizabeth.
That evening, in the housekeeper’s room, Rosa can do nothing but
murmur Lady Dedlock’s praises. She is so affable, so graceful, so
beautiful, so elegant; has such a sweet voice and such a thrilling
touch that Rosa can feel it yet! Mrs. Rouncewell confirms all this,
not without personal pride, reserving only the one point of
affability. Mrs. Rouncewell is not quite sure as to that. Heaven
forbid that she should say a syllable in dispraise of any member of
that excellent family, above all, of my Lady, whom the whole world
admires; but if my Lady would only be “a little more free,” not quite
so cold and distant, Mrs. Rouncewell thinks she would be more
affable.
“’Tis almost a pity,” Mrs. Rouncewell adds—only “almost” because it
borders on impiety to suppose that anything could be better than it
is, in such an express dispensation as the Dedlock affairs—“that my
Lady has no family. If she had had a daughter now, a grown young
lady, to interest her, I think she would have had the only kind of
excellence she wants.”
“Might not that have made her still more proud, grandmother?” says
Watt, who has been home and come back again, he is such a good
grandson.
“More and most, my dear,” returns the housekeeper with dignity, “are
words it’s not my place to use—nor so much as to hear—applied to
any drawback on my Lady.”
“I beg your pardon, grandmother. But she is proud, is she not?”
“If she is, she has reason to be. The Dedlock family have always
reason to be.”
“Well,” says Watt, “it’s to be hoped they line out of their
prayer-books a certain passage for the common people about pride and
vainglory. Forgive me, grandmother! Only a joke!”
“Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, my dear, are not fit subjects for
joking.”
“Sir Leicester is no joke by any means,” says Watt, “and I humbly ask
his pardon. I suppose, grandmother, that even with the family and
their guests down here, there is no objection to my prolonging my
stay at the Dedlock Arms for a day or two, as any other traveller
might?”
“Surely, none in the world, child.”
“I am glad of that,” says Watt, “because I have an inexpressible
desire to extend my knowledge of this beautiful neighbourhood.”
He happens to glance at Rosa, who looks down and is very shy indeed.
But according to the old superstition, it should be Rosa’s ears that
burn, and not her fresh bright cheeks, for my Lady’s maid is holding
forth about her at this moment with surpassing energy.
My Lady’s maid is a Frenchwoman of two and thirty, from somewhere in
the southern country about Avignon and Marseilles, a large-eyed brown
woman with black hair who would be handsome but for a certain feline
mouth and general uncomfortable tightness of face, rendering the jaws
too eager and the skull too prominent. There is something indefinably
keen and wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful way of looking
out of the corners of her eyes without turning her head which could
be pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she is in an ill humour
and near knives. Through all the good taste of her dress and little
adornments, these objections so express themselves that she seems to
go about like a very neat she-wolf imperfectly tamed. Besides being
accomplished in all the knowledge appertaining to her post, she is
almost an Englishwoman in her acquaintance with the language;
consequently, she is in no want of words to shower upon Rosa for
having attracted my Lady’s attention, and she pours them out with
such grim ridicule as she sits at dinner that her companion, the
affectionate man, is rather relieved when she arrives at the spoon
stage of that performance.
Ha, ha, ha! She, Hortense, been in my Lady’s service since five years
and always kept at the distance, and this doll, this puppet,
caressed—absolutely caressed—by my Lady on the moment of her
arriving at the house! Ha, ha, ha! “And do you know how pretty you
are, child?” “No, my Lady.” You are right there! “And how old are
you, child! And take care they do not spoil you by flattery, child!”
Oh, how droll! It is the BEST thing altogether.
In short, it is such an admirable thing that Mademoiselle Hortense
can’t forget it; but at meals for days afterwards, even among her
countrywomen and others attached in like capacity to the troop of
visitors, relapses into silent enjoyment of the joke—an enjoyment
expressed, in her own convivial manner, by an additional tightness of
face, thin elongation of compressed lips, and sidewise look, which
intense appreciation of humour is frequently reflected in my Lady’s
mirrors when my Lady is not among them.
All the mirrors in the house are brought into action now, many of
them after a long blank. They reflect handsome faces, simpering
faces, youthful faces, faces of threescore and ten that will not
submit to be old; the entire collection of faces that have come to
pass a January week or two at Chesney Wold, and which the fashionable
intelligence, a mighty hunter before the Lord, hunts with a keen
scent, from their breaking cover at the Court of St. James’s to their
being run down to death. The place in Lincolnshire is all alive. By
day guns and voices are heard ringing in the woods, horsemen and
carriages enliven the park roads, servants and hangers-on pervade the
village and the Dedlock Arms. Seen by night from distant openings in
the trees, the row of windows in the long drawing-room, where my
Lady’s picture hangs over the great chimney-piece, is like a row of
jewels set in a black frame. On Sunday the chill little church is
almost warmed by so much gallant company, and the general flavour of
the Dedlock dust is quenched in delicate perfumes.
The brilliant and distinguished circle comprehends within it no
contracted amount of education, sense, courage, honour, beauty, and
virtue. Yet there is something a little wrong about it in despite of
its immense advantages. What can it be?
Dandyism? There is no King George the Fourth now (more the pity) to
set the dandy fashion; there are no clear-starched jack-towel
neckcloths, no short-waisted coats, no false calves, no stays. There
are no caricatures, now, of effeminate exquisites so arrayed,
swooning in opera boxes with excess of delight and being revived by
other dainty creatures poking long-necked scent-bottles at their
noses. There is no beau whom it takes four men at once to shake into
his buckskins, or who goes to see all the executions, or who is
troubled with the self-reproach of having once consumed a pea. But is
there dandyism in the brilliant and distinguished circle
notwithstanding, dandyism of a more mischievous sort, that has got
below the surface and is doing less harmless things than
jack-towelling itself and stopping its own digestion, to which no
rational person need particularly object?
Why, yes. It cannot be disguised. There ARE at Chesney Wold this
January week some ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion, who
have set up a dandyism—in religion, for instance. Who in mere
lackadaisical want of an emotion have agreed upon a little dandy talk
about the vulgar wanting faith in things in general, meaning in the
things that have been tried and found wanting, as though a low fellow
should unaccountably lose faith in a bad shilling after finding it
out! Who would make the vulgar very picturesque and faithful by
putting back the hands upon the clock of time and cancelling a few
hundred years of history.
There are also ladies and gentlemen of another fashion, not so new,
but very elegant, who have agreed to put a smooth glaze on the world
and to keep down all its realities. For whom everything must be
languid and pretty. Who have found out the perpetual stoppage. Who
are to rejoice at nothing and be sorry for nothing. Who are not to be
disturbed by ideas. On whom even the fine arts, attending in powder
and walking backward like the Lord Chamberlain, must array themselves
in the milliners’ and tailors’ patterns of past generations and be
particularly careful not to be in earnest or to receive any impress
from the moving age.
Then there is my Lord Boodle, of considerable reputation with his
party, who has known what office is and who tells Sir Leicester
Dedlock with much gravity, after dinner, that he really does not see
to what the present age is tending. A debate is not what a debate
used to be; the House is not what the House used to be; even a
Cabinet is not what it formerly was. He perceives with astonishment
that supposing the present government to be overthrown, the limited
choice of the Crown, in the formation of a new ministry, would lie
between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle—supposing it to be
impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be
assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of
that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the
leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to
Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle,
what are you to do with Noodle? You can’t offer him the Presidency of
the Council; that is reserved for Poodle. You can’t put him in the
Woods and Forests; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What
follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces
(as is made manifest to the patriotism of Sir Leicester Dedlock)